A walk through my wild beautiful world

So I am forcing – I mean, encouraging- my family on a new and exciting path of downsizing our lives and living more simply. My hubby does not really know this. He will be my biggest hold out. He thinks that living simply means we don’t get all the premium channels on cable. I hopefully can get him on board before long.

I do not intend to go crazy with this. I will not get rid of the car. I will not suddenly become a vegetarian. I will not pare down my life to 100 items or some other unrealistic, crazy goal. I admire people who can do it, but I have 4 children still living at home and a husband who will all need time to adjust. I am going to try to do this in a way that a normal suburban family can live with.

I just want us to get by with less. Love what we have. Be conscious of our purchases and our spending. Appreciate our home and make it a place we love to spend time in. Spend time outside. Exercise daily. Spend less time working and more time playing, but not have the house fall apart while we are at it. Have time to do the things we think about doing, but never get around to.

Today I am going to start by getting rid of some of my own stuff and helping the kids look at their things in a new way and get rid of the things we don’t use and love.

I am really wanting to get an effective meal plan going. I want my family to eat less prepared foods and eat out less. My goal right now is to get 5 servings of fruit and veggies into me and the kids every day and once a week to try something new. I am going to post my meals for the week and then a wrap up of how it went.

Meal plan for March 22- March 28th 2010

Monday –

Breakfast – Cereal and fruit, coffee for me chocolate milk for the girls

This is just a guide since meals may be swapped if we are going out somewhere, but I hope we can do it and the kids will get used to the routine of a planned snack and not just raid the fridge/pantry when they get hungry!

I really would love to have a sweet blog and a few readers. I have ideas, really I do! But I never seem to be able to create time to blog on a regular basis. Why? You may ask, well, here is what I have come up with-

My excuses why I am a failure at blogging-

1. I do not wear a camera around my neck 24 hours a day, nor do I have an area of my home set aside for perfectly lit photos. Apparently lots of beautiful photos of every moment of my blissfully creative and beautiful days is a prerequisite for blogging. (Ok, there is so much contrary to my life in that last sentence it is laughable)

2. I have active inquisitive children who have a passion for pushing the envelope and on frequent occasion, ripping the darn thing to shreds whenever the occasion (ie: mom’s not watching!) presents itself.

3. I am not perfect. I am incredibly imperfect, and not in a quirky bohemian way that makes people smile, but in a my kids watch too much tv, eat too much fast food, talk loudly in church and I end up yelling more than I should and my house is a cluttered mess of toys, dirty dishes, scattered shoes and laundry begging to be put away kind of way. (yes, clean and folded clothes, you are my nemesis…) Mrs. Cleaver I am not.

4. I do not crank out gorgeous handmaid items with blinding speed and astonishing creativity. I look a lot, too much in fact. I start a few. I finish even fewer. I forget to take photos along the way. Add that to I am slow and a perfectionist. = Not a lot to show.

5. I am tired – a lot. My 1 year old does not sleep through the night. My 3year old’s nap does not coincide with her baby brother’s naps. My 5 year old is vehemently opposed to napping. My husband works crazy hours. I have a teenager who thinks 10pm is tragically early to go to bed.

So, that’s about the size of it. I’m sure I will think up more excuses. Maybe someday I will actually have a blog people will read, but most likely not. I have kids making model magic worms in the other room and for some reason that scares me… Gotta go.

We finally bought a new desktop to replace our aging laptop. (yes, I know most people go the other direction, but this is what worked best for us!) Hopefully it will improve my ability to get online and stay on! Yea!!!

We also bought a beautiful computer desk that is full of storage and has made all the difference in our Living room/computer area. It is actually starting to look like a room someone could visit and not an embarrassing and hideous hodgepodge of mismatched junk. I am going to finish this room and keep going. the improvement has really motivated me to get our house to be more of a “home” even if it is a (hopefully) temporary rental. It struck me as really sad that I am now past 40, but my house has no sense of style or continuity. That has to change. I may not want to grow up myself, but I do want a lovely grown-up style home!

I am going to be sewing. LOTS of sewing. Soon I will be getting my I-Spy fabrics and making a quilt. I have a bunch of darling fabrics to make clothes for the little girls. I also hope to get some home decorating projects completed

Ok, now that everything is fixed I have a confession to make.
I was so excited to be a part of my first swap.
I bought some great fabrics.
I cut squares. I cut some more squares.
I fussy cut 40 squares. (Hey this is a big deal for a newbie like me!!! They take forever!) I was so proud of the little stacks of squares on my dining room table. I took pictures of them (see!)
I packed them up and got ready to head off to the post office.
I got online to find Wendy’s address to mail my little beauties Down Under.
I scanned the e-mail instructions.
Something caught my eye.
Something I didn’t expect.
A number.
4
As in 4″ squares.
Somewhere along the line 3″ squares lodged in my brain and 3″ squares is what I cut.
200 now unusable (for this project anyway) 3″ squares.
I wanted to cry. I wanted to quit. I’ve had a rough couple of weeks. This just topped it off.
With some sympathy and encouragement from my dear husband, I hiked up my big girl panties and headed out to the fabric store – the really nice one- where I bought new fabrics (and another confession- some extra fabric not for the swap)
I went home and cut like crazy.
I discovered that 4″ squares are way easier to cut than 3″ squares.
I packed up the 4 ” squares and sent my husband to the post office with them.
After he left I realized I forgot to take a picture of them, so here is a picture of the scraps.

I am going to finish this swap cutting, really I am. I am just going to curse my fabric choices royally along the way. I had to fussy cut 2 of the fabrics and it took FOREVER!!! (and I snapped at my little sweeties more than once for trying to “help”). It doesn’t help that I am very new to all this quilting business so I had no idea what I was really doing so messed up more than a couple of nearly finished squares. I actually had 2 others that I belatedly realized were going to require fussy cutting also, so they were relegated to the ever-growing pile of “cute fabrics without a particular purpose” and I am heading to the fabric store to find a couple of non-stressful smallish all over prints. Not that I mind HAVING to go fabric shopping… I will have the collection out in the mail tomorrow – I PROMISE!!!

So while the weather here is awful and dreary most of my family, myself included, has come down with a terrible head cold. I am being buried in an avalanche of used tissues. (YUCK!!!) The worst is my little who can’t breathe and has trouble sleeping, poor little guy! He hates that little nose sucker and the saline drops. Hopefully we will all start feeling better soon! I am going to the fabric store no matter what today, even if it means going with 3 kids in tow!!